Enter an Approriation
The legislature writes appropriation bills to establish appropriations for agencies. Appropriation bills determine the dollar amounts and the fiscal coding structure of an agency’s approriation, and therefore guides the agency in fiscal coding transactions.
Fiscal codes must be set up in STARS before transactions can be entered. Fiscal year end instructions sent by the State Controller’s Office describe those processes.
Other information regarding budgets can be found on the Budget and Policy Analysis section of the Legislative Services Office and the Division of Financial Management web sites.
1. Select Appropriations from the main menu.
2. Click the Appropriation tab.
3. Enter an eight character (alphanumeric) document number in the Doc #field.
4. Enter an Effective Date or select a date from the calendar.
5. Type a Description and Comments to describe and explain the appropriation. Do not use specia characters or symbols, such as &, ', “, <, and \.
6. If your agency uses Group names, select a Group from the drop down menu.
Figure 1 - New document example
7. Click Save & Continue or Save & Clear.
1. If you plan on entering more than the default number of 10 rows of transactions, change the number of Rows per page so that all of your transactions can be viewed on one page.
2. Click Add Row.
Figure 2 – Add row and import a template buttons
3. Enter a transaction code in the TC field or press F3 to search for a transaction code, and then press TAB or click into another fiscal code field. Other fiscal codes required by the transaction code will be highlighted. Fiscal codes not used by the transaction code will not be available.
4. Enter the fiscal coding as needed. Appropriation bills determine the dollar amounts and the fiscal coding of an agency’s appropriation. So you may not need to enter a PCA or Index if it is not specified in the related bill. In fact, a PCA or Index may look up a Budget Unit or Fund that you do not want on your appropriation.
Figure 4 – Fiscal coding example
7. If needed, you can search for a fiscal code in those fields marked with an asterisk (also known as doing a “look up”), but the fiscal coding must match your appropriation bill.
a. Place the cursor in the field and press F3. b. In the ‘look up’ dialog box, enter any combination of search criteria – transaction code number or the title. You can enter just the first few numbers or letters or use the wildcard (%). c. Click Find. d. Click the fiscal code you want to use. The code will be entered on the distribution grid. When selecting a PCA or Index, any other related fiscal codes, such as the Budget Unit and Fund, will be entered automatically as long as the PCA or Index have been set up in STARS to do this.
a. Place the cursor in the field and press F3.
b. In the ‘look up’ dialog box, enter any combination of search criteria – transaction code number or the title. You can enter just the first few numbers or letters or use the wildcard (%).
c. Click Find.
d. Click the fiscal code you want to use. The code will be entered on the distribution grid. When selecting a PCA or Index, any other related fiscal codes, such as the Budget Unit and Fund, will be entered automatically as long as the PCA or Index have been set up in STARS to do this.
Figure 5 - Fiscal Code lookup
5. Do not use special characters or symbols, including &, ', “, <, and \, in the Description field.
8. To enter another blank row, click Add Row. If you want to create a duplicate of a row, including the amount and fiscal coding, click Dup next to that row. You can then change just the amount and/or a few fiscal codes as needed. NOTE: Click Save & Continue often. If you enter several rows, but do no save your work, and you see a warning message, it is possible that none of your work will be saved.
9. If you enter any codes or rows incorrectly and need to change them, click Undo Updates. Anything you have entered and not saved will be deleted.
10. To delete a row from the document, click Del next to the row.
11. When finished adding the transaction rows, click Save & Continue or Save & Clear.
12. Click Delete Document if you need to start over and only if the document has been saved (but before Distribution Complete).
13. Click Distribution Complete. The document will then be ready for the agency’s approval and/or release (if approvals have been enabled by the administrator).
The following transaction codes require an Approval Level 8. For agencies 100, 101, 102, 104 and 110, an appropriation transaction batch that is approved/released by the agency will not be released by DFM. The transaction batch will route to SCO Release.010 - ORIGINAL APPROPRIATION 012- PRIOR YEAR RE-APPROPRIATION (USUALLY FYE) 015 SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATION 015- SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATION017- CLOSE CURRENT YEAR RE-APPROPRIATION (USUALLY FYE) 019- GOVERNOR'S HOLDBACK OF AN APPROPRIATION 021- REVERSION OF AN APPROPRIATION (USUALLY FYE) 022- BOARD OF EXAMINER'S REDUCTION OF AN APPROPRIATION 025- NON-COGNIZABLE FUNDS APPROPRIATION 027- RECEIPT TO APPROPRIATION 030- OBJECT TRANSFER OF APPROPRIATION BETWEEN OBJECT LEVELSRequires a 030R to record the corresponding decrease in the related object.031- ACTIVITY TRANSFER OF APPROPRIATION BETWEEN FUNCTIONS/BU (Requires a 031R to record the corresponding decrease in the related function.)060- ORIGINAL APPROPRIATION & ANNUAL ALLOCATION 304- SCO PY ADJ - PY ENCUMBRANCE DECREASED BY TC220 305- SCO PY ADJ - PY ENCUMBRANCE CANCEL OR FINAL IN ERROR